I was working for an internet company some time back that had ridiculous expectations of its staff. We'd work an average of 60 hour weeks, paid for 40 but we were all relatively young and were somehow convinced that was what people did.

The owner was the type that you just knew woke up and while looking in the mirror kept trying to convince himself that he as a good person.

He kept the clients and communication with them so TIGHT that I'd be told, in passing, about critical details only days before MAJOR things were to be acted on. This, set me up for failure time and time again as the only Senior Project Manager.

Eventually, I was fired. The following Monday that owner thought it best to buy himself a Ferrari. I can only imagine the contempt that my fellow co-workers must have had.
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I used to work for an engineering firm that had to downsize during the post-2001 economic downturn. There was much hand-wringing and apologizing for it, but in the end about 15% of the staff were given a month's notice. About two weeks into this month, the CEO cheerily sent out an e-mail saying that they were thinking about hiring someone full-time to set up a permanent coffee/sandwich stall in the lobby. One of the outgoing staffers decided to hit 'reply to all' and wrote a very lengthy, expletive-filled diatribe about how insulting it was to be fired to make way for a sandwich stall.
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I worked for a small company that eventually got bought out by a large corporation. It was a shock to most of us and all were worried about losing the close, family like group we had for years. We were assured by the (newly wealthy) original owners that nothing would change and we'd all continue to live on in happy bliss.

During the first year, very little changed. We did begin to receive more mass emails from the upper management of the new corporation, often with a lot of blah, blah, blah, rah, rah, rah rant that didn't actually say much of anything. Grumbling among our group began, but no one really said much of anything, mainly fearing being laid off by the new management.

In the fall of that year, the new young president of the monster corporation sent out one such email. It touted how successful the company was, with profits exceeding expectations. An old timer with the company who was known for his unconventional antics decided to reply:

"Great news! Thanks for the email. Since we are doing so well, how 'bout a raise?"

Unfortunately, an assistant who screened the president's email caught it and sent it to our local management level. Everyone was extremely upset, and I as this man's supervisor, was directed to have a stern talk with him and write him up. I did follow up with an email and later a phone call that said:

"Excellent job! It's what we are all thinking and we appreciate you taking the initiative".
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At one major multinational communications company that is Canadian based, they called my whole department including the department head in to a conference room, where a phone was set up without any other personnel from the company were present.

The phone rang and the department head answered it. He was told to put the call on speaker phone and in in a one minute statement the voice at the other end told us we were all layed off immediately with one weeks severance per yaer of service and to clean out our dseks and leave. That was it! NICE COMPANY!
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I worked in credit card dispute resolutions for a mid sized bank. Customers would complain about an unknown charge on their credit cards and it was my job to investigate and report back to them. This usually took about 30 days. I was at the behest of the credit card providers, not the bank's rules, hence the 30 day turn around time.

Our team was running smoothly until they appointed a new Team Leader and shunted our much beloved usual team leader sideways. This woman was a nightmare. She would hold weekly meetings and tell us all the new procedures that would be implemented, most of which ran contrary to the smooth operation of the team. She was clearly a corporate climber and had a nasty attitude to boot. She would always ask for questions or comments, but she'd trained everyone to be so scared of her reaction that nobody would put up their hands. At the end of the meetings, she would say, "Good work, Team. You're all STARS!!!!"

Upper management wanted to save costs, so they did a review of everyone's job. We were all on contracts so we were cheap fodder anyway. I liked my job until her underling/moron lackey/team leader wannabe was appointed to do an audit of my job. I tried to explain to him over many meetings why some months had a lot of disputes resolved and other months didn't. He JUST.DID.NOT.GET the concept that the disputes were clocked at 30 days from the day I received them, not 30 days from the 1st of each month.

Each meeting with him would find me getting frustrated constantly having to justify my work ethic (which is quite substantial) and him not understanding my plain English explanations.

In the end, it was decided that I wasn't good enough at my job and my contract wasn't renewed. I heard they ended up giving my job to a girl who was completely lazy and spent most of her time on the phone to her boyfriend. Meanwhile, my perfect turn around record was reduced to at least 280 disputes outstanding longer than 90 days! What happened then? The credit card providers ended up following their rules and denying anything older than 30 days and the bank wearing the costs of the dispute as they tried to keep their customers happy.

I went on to greener pastures and lived a happy corporate life. I ended up finding out from old work colleagues that the corporate climbing Team Leader lost her job in the downsize.
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